In this Year of Mercy, let us try to have a more compassionate love for the poor, the pregnant, the prisoner, the immigrant, and the sick.

Why doesn’t it?

The rhetoric of the anti-abortion movement renders pregnant women invisible, transparent, so that the only visible subject is the zygote, embryo, or fetus that the women are gestating. (Note that “gestate” is an active verb, requiring a subject as well as an object.)

The legislative speech of the anti-abortion movement infantilizes pregnant women, treating them as moral naifs who simply don’t realize what they are doing, or haven’t thought it through. Sometimes it lies to them.

The protest speech of the anti-abortion movement vilifies and harasses pregnant women, verbally, visually, and physically.

Given these other choices, rhetorical invisibility seems preferable. But that invisibility insidiously enables the infantilization, deception, and harassment: by replacing pregnant women with the fruit of their wombs, it fosters compassion for the latter while rendering the former not only rhetorically, but morally, invisible. This erasure of pregnant women is both morally and theologically problematic.

In this Year of Mercy, let us try to have a more compassionate love for the poor, the pregnant, the prisoner, the immigrant, and the sick.